Lile the Redeemer
by lovepb13
Summary: Set after SON OF A WITCH. Assumes Elphaba’s death was faked Liir decides he can’t be a father. GELPHIE


**Title:** Lile the Redeemer  
**Fandom:** Wicked bookverse  
**Characters & Pairings:** Elphaba/Glinda  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own Greogorie Magoire's_ Wicked  
_**Summary: **Set after SON OF A WICH. (Assumes Elphaba's death was faked) Liir decides he can't be a father.

_I could never be a father. I don't have the courage or the brains and I certainly never had the heart._

_Liir_

Glinda clutched the note in her hands, the light from the candle making the blue of the ink glow teal through the yellow parchment. She read it again and again, making sure she understood it fully before daring to open the suspiciously gurgling package that had been left on her balcony, 3 storeys up. It had been signed by the boy, the one who had come to her years before with _her_ mannerisms, so she assumed whatever was in the bundle belonged to him. She had seen him a couple of times since then and each time he had been more like _her_.

Her assumptions were right of course, she knew that the moment she moved the muslin back and was greeted with emerald skin. Skin that glowed in the candlelight precisely as _hers_ had done on the road to the Emerald City a lifetime before. Glinda's curls bobbed gently as she shook the memory from her head, trying to make room for the flood of new thoughts that she would surely be subjected to from this bundle of moss.

"So you are her's after all." She murmured absently to the missing boy. If his child was as green as Elphaba then he had definitely been _hers_. "She never was sure."

The baby slowly opened its sapphire eyes and looked at the small woman hovering above it. A confused expression flitted briefly over the infants features before it settled on contented curiosity, reaching out a chubby green hand to capture a lock of golden curls and tugging on it sharply.

"Definitely hers." Glinda decided, tugging her hair out of the baby's grasp. "You mean thing." She was trying to be annoyed but found that all she could manage was amused. Elphaba would be mortified if she ever found out she was a grandmother.

The baby squeaked.

"You may well protest," Glinda said as she got up from her very unladylike crouch, "but your grandmother suffered it and so will you." She put her hands on her hips and looked down at the bundle, now in the relative warmth of her chambers. "I never intended to be a mother." She told the child. "I had neither the patience nor the inclination, especially for the conception part. I'll never know how you're grandmother did it." She shivered at the thought, the thought of Fiyero and...

The baby scrunched up its face as if in agreement.

"I really am too old for this." She muttered, bending down to scoop the baby up, muslin and all.

* * *

"All hail Glinda the Good!" A stock man in Gale Force uniform shouted as Glinda stepped out onto the terrace decked in her finest gown and stopped at the top of the stone stairs. "And all hail her daughter, ''Lile the Redeemer!" A small girl of about five or six with skin as green as sin and a dress as white snow walked out after Glinda. The Good Witch held out her hand to the small girl, smiling down at her encouragingly before turning to face the crowd.

"Dearest Ozians," Glinda greeted, "We are here today to celebrate!"

The crowd in the square below erupted into a well rehearsed cheer, a cheer that Glinda had heard once a year since that fateful day. It still chilled her to the bone. Though no longer in office it was still Glinda's job to oversee the festivities on this special occasion, that of the death of the Wicked Witch of the West. Informally referred to as Death Day. Glinda thought the name terribly morbid.

Lile clutched tighter to her mother, shaking from the force of the chanting below them. "Make them stop." She whispered, loud enough for only Glinda to hear.

Glinda held up her free hand to silence the crowd. "As this is the first year that my daughter, Lile the Redeemer, will get to celebrate this momentous occasion I would appreciate if you would keep you excitement to a hush. She is still only a baby to this world and I'm afraid she had inherited my headaches."

The crowd broke into a fond laughter.

Glinda smiled her most genuine looking fake smile. "As I'm sure you will all understand, Lile is a delicate creature and I would ask you to be forgiving of her lack of enthusiasm. She is too young to remember the tyranny of the Wicked Witch she was sent to us to atone for."

"Hail the Redeemer!" One man shouted.

And soon the rest of the crowd followed .

The Redeemer. Glinda had had to think fast that night when a shocked servant had entered her chambers and found a green baby pressed to her breast. It had been the first thing she had thought of, proclaiming that the child had been sent to her by Lurline herself (for there had been somewhat of a Lurlinist resurgence at the time) to atone for the sins of the green witch who had so terrorised them. The reincarnation of evil through Good. An innocent.

"Can we go inside now?" Lile asked, watching the crowd with large worried eyes.

Glinda sighed, scanning the crowd. It had been 6 years since she had seen a black cloaked figure in the shadows behind the Death Day crowd. 6 years since she had caught a glimpse of _her_. "Yes, we can go inside."

* * *

"So it's true then?"

Glinda' head snapped round to her open balcony doors, gasping in fear at the figure blocking out the light of the moon. The figure was tall and surrounded in a cape of some sort, hiding its identity. "I'll call the Gale Force if you don't leave stranger!" Glinda threatened with all the confidence she could muster. The Gale Force hadn't been under her influence for years, not since she had disobeyed Shell and refused to move out of her city palace and retire to the that dump in the country he had insisted upon.

"She's green?" the figure stepped forward into the light of the lamp, her features illuminated.

"Elphie?" Glinda questioned, taking a step forward and reaching out a tentative hand. She was too far away to touch but the urge was irresistible.

"Is it true you bore a green girl?" Elphaba stepped further into the room, shaking off the hood of her cloak.

"She is green." Glinda said. "But you would have seen that already if you had bothered to come after the announcement." It came out harsher than she had intended and Elphaba suddenly felt like an absentee father. The announcement had gone out the day after Lile had been discovered that Glinda the Good had been sent a child to redeem Oz, a green child. That was the other reason Shell was so furious with her, the whole of Oz thought upon the child as a new Ozma of sorts. A child heir to the throne.

"Why would I come at the news you had birthed a child? It's hardly a novel achievement." Elphaba said sharply.

Glinda scrunched her face up in disgust and gestured to her perfect waist. "Do I look as if I carried her? She's you're kin you fool! Why else would she be green?!"

Elphaba's eyes went wide.

"But how?" She asked.

"Liir." Glinda said, distracted. "He abandoned her, must be a family trait."

Elphaba looked annoyed for a moment. "Hang on just a clock tick..."

"Oh, I mean no harm Elphie. I just mean it proves it even more, doesn't it?" Glinda said, some of the softness returning to her face.

"Does she know?" Elphaba asked, trying to see past Glinda into the connecting room.

"Of course, but she's _my _daughter." Glinda said indignantly. "No one else could be bothered to raise her."

"I didn't know!" Elphaba protested.

"She's seventeen this year, you've had plenty of time to find out!" Glinda said, annoyed now.

"Mother?" Lile called, walking into the room. "What do you think about this one? I know it's not Gillikin Silk but..." She stopped dead and dropped the ribbon she had been holding to the floor.

Elphaba took a step toward the green skinned girl, captivated at the sight. Seeing this young girl with glowing yellow-green skin, silken black hair, fine features and sapphire bright eyes all bound up in the finest powder blue dress she would have sworn that the girl was Glinda's. "Glinda" She breathed, "she's perfect."

"I know." Glinda said. "Lile, come meet your grandmother, Elphaba Thropp."

"But..." Lile began, taking a step towards her mother. "I thought she'd be older."She said quizzically.

"Definitely Glinda's daughter." Elphaba murmured under her breath.

Glinda raised an eyebrow.

"She hasn't aged a day from that photo I've seen, the one of the two of you in the EC in the olden days." Lile said, still not directing her speech to Elphaba. "Why have neither of you aged a day, it seems not a day goes by that I don't look different."

"Fame." Glinda said simply. "Or infamy." She said, looking at Elphaba.

"You live forever, whether you want to or not." Elphaba said.

"Really?!" Lile said, her eyes sparkling.

"No, not really." Glinda said. "Life just happened too quick for us, we haven't caught up yet."

Elphaba smiled lightly at this, her eyes meeting Glinda's and for the briefest of moments they were back in their room at Shiz, happy together.

* * *

"She's a good girl, you've done well Glinda." Elphaba said, sitting beside the blonde woman in front of the fire once the girl had gone to bed.

"She is." Glinda agreed. "She's off to Shiz next year; I don't know how I'll live without her." She shifted to placing her head on Elphaba's shoulder.

"I thought she'd react worse when she saw me, I thought you'd react worse." Elphaba said, resting her head atop Glinda's.

"We've been waiting for you for a long time, we were more than ready." Glinda said, yawning.

"I'm sorry, my sweet. I couldn't risk Shell finding me." Elphaba whispered.

"Where have you been?" Glinda asked, knowing full well she wouldn't get an answer.

"Just here and there, nowhere in particular."

"No home?" Glinda asked.

"This is my home." She murmured.

Glinda smiled. "You've learned flattery in our years apart."

"Only to speak the truth." Elphaba said.

Glinda laughed. "You've gone soft."

"It must be my age." Elphaba chuckled.

"According to my daughter neither of us has aged a day." Glinda pointed out.

"Maybe we were waiting for each other." Elphaba said, dropping a kiss on Glinda's forehead.

Glinda yawned again. "I hope that doesn't mean I'm going to start ageing now in double time to make up for it."

"Never, my sweet." Elphaba said. "Never."


End file.
